Suttons City Living Blog - Property Gossip

The overwhelming majority of people will not give up avocado on toast in order to get on the housing ladder. In total, 87% out of 2,000 surveyed will not give up the luxury – even though one in three regard home ownership as one of life’s top priorities. Rather than giving up their favourite luxury, […]

Senior staff from Foxtons, Knight Frank and Savills have held a summit to try and find out why tiny bedsits in the grimmer parts of Clapham are not meeting their £1m valuations. An optional feature of these “single-room human containment units” is the hybrid kitchen sink and urinal, available for an extra £22,000. The agents […]

A lawyer has warned that estate agents trying to offload their anti-money laundering responsibilities via outsourcing to a third party will not succeed. Arthur Robinson, director at north-east law firm Emmersons, said: “Recently my firm received a request from an estate agent in relation to confirmation on how we carried out customer due diligence and […]

A woman who was unfairly dismissed from Countrywide has won over £60,000. She had complained of a drop in staff morale, and her inability to lodge tenants’ deposits after Countrywide bought the firm she worked for. Mrs A. Fletcher won her claim to have been constructively unfairly dismissed at an employment tribunal which looked into […]

Share options have been granted to the CEO of Purplebricks in the UK. Lee Wainwright has been given options to subscribe for 100,000 shares in the company. The options were granted under the company’s share option plan for employees and have an exercise price of £4.15 – the closing price as at March 2. However, […]

In 2002, the board of HMV were told by their marketing agency that the chain faced three major threats: online retailers, downloadable music and supermarkets offering discounts. HMV’s managing director replied: “I accept that supermarkets are a thorn in our side but not for the serious music, games or film buyer. As for other two, […]

The investment arm of an independent estate agent has acquired a proptech events company. LiFE Ventures, part of London agent LiFE Residential, has bought TeqDen for an undisclosed sum. The business, which was founded by Christopher Walkey, holds events in Manchester and London where entrepreneurs can pitch their businesses to potential entrepreneurs. Jonathan Werth, managing […]

Email to a friend Print An estate agent has found a new vehicle for the launch of his hybrid estate agency and is today due to take collection of his new office – a fully-branded mobile sales unit. Neil Harvey, one of the first Purplebricks Local Property Experts, has just launched The Property Market. With […]

The triumvirate at the top of troubled estate agency group Countrywide have each bought shares in the firm at market prices following last year’s disastrous results. Executive chairman Peter Long has bought 200,000 shares at 79.8p each. He now holds 571,429 shares altogether. Chief financial officer Himanshu Raja has bought 100,000 shares at 88p. He […]

An online agent planning to be to Ireland what Purplebricks is to the UK is bidding to raise £200,000 by crowdfunding. Former London agent David Madden launched Dublin-based Moove last August, complete with a network of Local Property Experts. The firm claims to be the first to market, with just three online agents currently operating […]

A new report by the Joseph Rowntree Association has proposed new incentives to encourage landlords to keep their properties up to scratch and to let to poorer tenants. They are: Introducing a rental incentive allowance allowing landlords to offset a proportion of their rental income against tax if they let to tenants in receipt of […]

Average house prices rose at the fastest rate for five months in February to £299,556, Your Move claims. The Your Move House Price Index for February shows that average values were up 0.5% on a monthly basis, the largest rise since the 0.6% recorded in September. The monthly rise reverses the flat growth experienced in […]

Countrywide’s in-house broker has slashed its forecast for the amount of earnings the group is expected to make in the coming two years, while another analyst has placed its forecast under review. The news came after Countrywide yesterday revealed thumping losses for last year, which sent the firm’s share price sinking 16% in early trading […]

Hunters’ Norfolk franchisee Kudos Residential, which ceased trading last month, went out of business owing more than £500,000, it has been revealed. But it looks as though only £2,400 will be available to creditors, including the firm’s own staff and local suppliers. A total of 21 employees of the business were left out of pocket […]

Hybrid agent easyProperty is expanding into lettings. The new service, which launched yesterday, has two new packages: easy Let and easy Let Plus. easy Let is a self-serve model that allows a landlord to take the lead to find a tenant for their property. Costing £99 including VAT, landlords will have an advert on Rightmove […]

EweMove has strongly defended its letter-writing campaign to poach other agents’ staff in their own workplaces, saying that it is proud of doing things differently and of being a “Marmite” brand. It has also pointed out that its letter-writing drive mirrors recruitment campaigns run through the trade press, including EYE. The campaign has so far […]

A group of property professionals, among them a number of estate agents, has devised a new system designed to speed up property transactions that has led to the completed sale and purchase of a house in just four weeks. The Plymouth Area Property Professionals Association (PAPPA) adopted a standardised property information questionnaire and sales protocol […]

Email to a friend Print The legendary founder of Countrywide, Harry Hill, says that the UK’s largest estate agent could be broken up in any sale. He also believes it will be difficult to recruit a new Countrywide boss, and has criticised the acting executive chairman as having no property experience. Hill told EYE yesterday […]

Foxtons has announced a worse than expected fall in profits. It had been widely expected to unveil a halving of profits, down to £8.9m, but this morning the firm said that pre-tax profits for last year were £6.5m, down from £18.8m in 2016. Group revenue was also down, from £132.7m in 2016, to £117.6m last […]

Connells Group this morning revealed a stunning 42% rise in pre-tax profits. Last year, the group made pre-tax profits of £104.2m, up from £73.4m in 3016. Total income rose 9%, to £457.2m. The results included a gain of £38.5m from the sale of shares in ZPG. Last year’s disposal followed a sale of Connells shares […]

The long-awaited Zoopla-backed Zero Deposit scheme has launched, nine months after EYE first unveiled the plans. The deposit replacement scheme, led by former Zoopla commercial director Jon Notley, has gone live to the public with financial backing from the portal among others. Connells, LSL, Knight Frank and Acorn Group are all signed up and have […]

The advertising watchdog has warned an agent that it will undertake a formal investigation if it is caught posting ‘misleading’ ads on portals for properties that are no longer available again. The Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) received a complaint about two properties advertised by London-based Portico Property, which has 18 offices around the capital. The […]

Rightmove has unveiled a double-digit rise in turnover and an operating profit margin of 76% as average revenue it receives per advertiser rose. However, while traffic grew for the 16th consecutive year, leads were actually 7% down last year, Rightmove reported this morning. Also reporting to the stock exchange this morning was OnTheMarket, which confirmed […]

An agent has told contractors to add a 10% margin to their bills, in order to help mitigate the loss of income because of the fees ban. In a letter sent out by the Belvoir franchisee, and which EYE has seen, the contractors are told: “Please send us your invoice for the full amount with […]

It’s misleading to say that tenants are being evicted from their homes for ‘no reason’. That’s the view of Mark Pilling, managing director of Spicerhaart corporate sales, who was responding to Wednesday’s BBC Panorama documentary about Section 21 notices, which appeared to suggest that the system needed to change. Pilling said that while the programme […]

The gap between supply and demand for rental properties widened in January with more prospective tenants than stock coming onto the market. ARLA Propertymark members reported 70 prospective tenants per branch in January, compared to just 59 in December, but supply dropped from 200 to 184 over the same period. The last time supply reached […]

London estate agency chain Dexters has added another business to its growing empire, after its acquisition of Benham & Reeves. The deal for Benham & Reeves, which has has four offices in north London, in Hampstead, Highgate, West Hampstead and Dartmouth Park, is for an undisclosed sum. The four offices will rebrand to Dexters “in […]

Mark Goddard, managing director of property at Zoopla’s parent company ZPG, is to leave the business. Goddard, who is head of both Zoopla and ZPG’s property software businesses, has been in his role for just under two years, having previously worked as chief executive of the Property Software Group, which is also owned by ZPG. […]

Council and trading standards officials have told MPs that penalties for letting agents and landlords flouting the planned tenants’ fees ban should be higher. Officials said they wanted rogue landlords and agents to see the fines as a deterrent, and also warned that they would need to be more substantial in order to fund the […]

Email to a friend Print Letting agents are set for at least another year or more of uncertainty as the Government has publicly confirmed the tenant fee ban is unlikely to be implemented before April 2019. The indication came in a response from the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government to a parliamentary petition […]

The College of Fellows, the membership body to which NAEA and ARLA luminaries are elected in recognition of their achievements in the sector, is set to be disbanded. Although the move is still officially in consultation, a letter from the College of Fellows’ chairman Ian Potter to members, seen by EYE, said Propertymark “appear to […]

A BBC Panorama documentary that last night examined ‘no-fault’ evictions through the stories of tenants being evicted and a landlord trying to evict a tenant appeared to suggest that the system needed to change. Although it spoke to parties on both sides of the argument, the documentary called Evicted for No Reason and presented by […]

A company that offers a car dealership reviews service is to start offering reviews of estate agents. JudgeService, which has offered a car dealership reviews service for the past seven years and claims to be used by over 1,000 dealerships, will unveil its latest venture at the inaugural Housing Digital event at Rudding Park in […]

Councils cannot use selective licensing conditions to impose new standards on private rented homes, the Court of Appeal has ruled. The ruling comes following a case involving Paul Brown, a landlord in Accrington, who challenged Hyndburn Council after it tried to use its selective licensing scheme in certain areas of the borough to force the […]

Online estate agents may have permanently changed the way in which vendors think about how they pay to sell their home, but traditional agents can still hit back by halving their fee and charging it upfront. That’s the claim from a specialist property analyst, who has been comparing the way in which the model of […]

Zoopla’s share of UK property listings is at its highest level in three years, according to a report by bank Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley yesterday upped its stance on the stock of Zoopla’s parent company ZPG from ‘equalweight’ to ‘overweight’ and set a new target price for the business of 400p. That is up from […]

Hunters has said that the circumstances that led one of its franchisees to cease trading were “unique” and that it hopes that “challenging” market conditions will encourage more independent operators to join the franchise. The comments came as Hunters unveiled an increase in income of nearly 10% in 2017. In a trading update ahead of […]

The BBC current affairs show Panorama is set to examine Section 21 notices – so-called ‘no-fault evictions’ – tonight, and debate whether tenants deserve more protection. The programme, called Evicted for No Reason, is at 8.30pm on BBC One. Investigative reporter Richard Bilton will look at how ‘no-fault evictions’, as Panorama is calling Section 21 […]

A proptech startup business that claims it can make letting agents more profitable by weeding out time-waster tenants has raised £3m in new funding. The Homie service, which is just two years old and covers London only, says it vets would-be tenants so that agents only see the ones who are serious about renting a […]

Ten of the UK’s top online/hybrid agents have raised nearly £250m between them since they were launched. Nearly 40% of that figure is accounted for by Purplebricks alone. EYE looked into the funding of 14 of the biggest names in the sector to see how much financial backing they have received since their respective launches. […]

The collapse of the business that operated the Hunters brand in Norfolk has resulted in the loss of 21 jobs, it has been confirmed. EYE revealed last week that Kudos Residential had ceased trading, wiping out Hunters’ presence in the county. The business has been placed into creditors’ voluntary liquidation with Price Bailey insolvency practitioners […]

An online letting agent has defended its failure to display EPC ratings on some of its Rightmove listings, after EYE uncovered several examples of properties for which no rating was displayed, some of which had been on the market for months. A reader contacted EYE to complain that online letting agent OpenRent was posting listings […]

The UK’s competition watchdog has unveiled a new crackdown on illegal price fixing, less than a year after it fined an estate agency group hundreds of thousands of pounds for the practice. The Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) announced it is launching a new campaign to encourage more people to come forward after it was […]

An Irish business promises to revolutionise property auctions when it launches its first UK online auction next month. BidX1, which took over veteran London firm Andrews & Robertson last month, takes a step away from the traditional auctioneering model by making its online technology available to everyone. All bids will be logged and displayed on […]

Email to a friend Print A local authority has fined its own sales and letting agency, so that it now appears on an official blacklist. Westminster Council’s CityWest Residential has been fined £15,000 for three breaches under the Consumer Rights Act. Its failures included not advertising fees charged to tenants. The fines were imposed after […]

The Government is moving closer to introducing a single ombudsman to cover the whole of the housing market, following an announcement over the weekend that it is holding a consultation into the way in which property redress is handled. Housing Secretary Sajid Javid revealed details yesterday of the eight-week consultation, which relates to the housing […]

One of the UK’s first deposit replacement scheme is currently unable to take on new business. Deposit replacement insurance scheme Dlighted has temporarily lost its regulatory registrations as it seeks a new provider for its protection product. Dlighted, set up by letting agent Ajay Jagota, offers an insurance product paid for by landlords instead of […]

Average asking prices have risen in every region of England, Wales and Scotland bar one, according to new figures from Rightmove. The portal’s House Price Index shows that average asking prices are up by 0.8% (or £2,414) to £300,001 for the month running from January 7 to February 10. At the same time, it revealed […]

The charity that runs the Lets with Pets scheme, which informs pet owners, landlords and letting agencies about privately renting with pets, has welcomed Labour proposals to make it a default for tenants to keep animals at home but has warned it needs to be done “in the right way”. The Labour party published the […]

Email to a friend Print Online estate agency Yopa is to launch a no sale, no fee option. The company will charge a flat rate fee of either £1,495 or £2,695 depending on where clients live. That’s more expensive that its traditional fee structure, which costs either £839 or £1,399, with the option to pay […]